Irked by delay, India reviews supercomputer deal

Irked by delay, India reviews supercomputer deal
PALLAVA BAGLA

NEW DELHI, MARCH 17: India has decided to act tough over the delay in the supply of a supercomputer to its weather forecasting agency by the US. The Government has ordered ``a complete review for breach of contractual obligations'' in the $ 2-million deal that was finalised with the US a few months ago, said a highly-placed source in the Government in an interview with The Indian Express. There is a possibility that the deal may be scrapped.

This is the second time in a row that the alleged US denial of high technology has come in the way of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) trying to upgrade its supercomputer facilities. The issue is likely to come up for discussion between Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and President Bill Clinton when they meet on Tuesday to iron out the setting up of a ``high-level'' Indo-US S&T Forum.

In October 1999, after hectic negotiations, the Ministry of Science and Technology had decided to replace the old and ailing Cray XMP Supercomputer used for weather forecasting by the IMD with another American supercomputer being purchased from Silicon Graphics Incorporated (SGI). It is now being felt that the US, which is so proactive on interacting with India on the IT-software professionals front, has often been caught dragging its feet when it comes to hard, high-tech deals where Indian S&T would really stand to gain.

Sources say that as per the contract with the American-owned Silicon SGI, the supercomputer was to have been delivered to the IMD latest by January 2000. The delay is probably because sanctions against India have once again come in the way. It seems the necessary export licenses are not forthcoming from the US Department of Commerce which has to formally clear the export of all high-end supercomputers like the one India has ordered. Repeated attempts failed to elicit any response both from Silicon Graphics India, which has its offices in Gurgaon, and from US officials both in Washington and New Delhi.

Citing the possible compromise of US national security through the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, all exports of high-end computers are carefully monitored and whetted by the Bureau of Export Administration (BXA), the same organisation that maintains the Entities List and the US agency responsible for policing all sanctions imposed by Washington. The supercomputer is very much needed by India to augment its purely civilian weather forecasting abilities.

The deal has been jinxed from the very beginning since even the initial choice of the SGI machine was not without controversy. The choice once again of an American machine caused a lot of heartburn among Indian computer specialists since indigenous machines like Param, the supercomputer developed by the Center for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune, and Anupam, the supercomputer developed by the Department of Atomic Energy, were given a go by and the American machine was ordered since the technical evaluation committee of the Government felt that only the Cray SVI Supercomputer could fulfill India's ``long-term needs'' of weather forecasting. Ironically it was the denial of a supercomputer by the US back in early eighties that gave a real fillip to the `swadeshi' manufacture of comparable machines.

Now two decades later India seems to have completely forgotten the lessons it should have learnt feels P.V.Indresan, a former director of Chennai IIT and President of the Indian Academy of Engineering, New Delhi. He adds ``we don't seem to have a sense of shame and even though someone had abused us in the past we don't mind going back to them again and again''.